Don’t
be evil is Google’s corporate motto, and a very good one. Google aspires
to be a
different kind of corporation, and it’s taking the heat for it. The
Bush Reich wants Google’s “honey
pot” of high-quality, comprehensive information, and Wall Street wants
to knock it down to size for thinking it can be different. It stumbled on
predicted earnings this quarter and got a little taste. We’ll see how long
they hold out on keeping their materials private. Sasa Zorovic, an analyst
at Oppenheimer & Co. confidently predicts, “At some point Google will be
humbled.”

And that’s what
happens when you go public. Every time. Cause and effect. The market
system is designed to produce a reliable result -- profitability -- every
time, regardless of the human or environmental cost. There is no way to be
a publicly traded corporation and remain free to be moral. Evil isn’t
optional. (On the other hand, the truly evil, real black holes, are also
privately held; I’m thinking Carlyle Group.)

The Democratic Party
has undergone the same process. As Jeff Faux points out in his wonderfully
lucid article in The Nation, “The
Party of Davos,” under Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party slipped its
New Deal moorings and became “the party of Davos,” -- i.e., globalization.
It explains so much that it’s worth quoting Faux at some length:

That the global
economy is developing a global ruling class should come as no shock. All
markets generate economic class differences. In stable, self-contained
national economies, where capital and labor need each other, political
bargaining produces a social contract that allows enough wealth to trickle
down from the top to keep the majority loyal. . . .

But as domestic
markets become global, investors increasingly find workers, customers and
business partners almost anywhere. Not surprisingly, they have come to
share more economic interests with their peers in other countries than
with people who simply have the same nationality. They also share a common
interest in escaping the restrictions of their domestic social contracts.
. . .

[A]s Renato
Ruggiero, the first director-general of the World Trade Organization,
noted in a rare moment of candor, “We are no longer writing the rules of
interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the
constitution of a single global economy.” (Emphasis added.) . . .

It is therefore no
surprise that the constitution of the world economy protects just one
class of citizen—the corporate investor. . . .

[T]he model for this
constitution is the North American Free Trade Agreement, conceived under
Ronald Reagan, nurtured by George H. W. Bush and delivered by Bill
Clinton. Among other things, NAFTA’s 1,000-plus pages give international
investors extraordinary rights to override government protections of
workers and the environment. It sets up secret panels, rife with conflicts
of interest, to judge disputes from which there is no appeal. It makes
virtually all nonmilitary government services subject to privatization and
systematically undercuts the public sector’s ability to regulate business.
. . . It’s impossible to understand why Democratic Party leaders
collaborated with Republicans to establish NAFTA unless reference is made
to cross-border class interests. . . . Clinton was more Davos than
Democrat. Tutored by financier Robert Rubin . . . Clinton embraced a
reactionary, pre-New Deal vision of a global future in which corporate
investors were unregulated and the social contract was history. . . .
“NAFTA happened,” said the then-chairman of American Express, “because of
the drive Bill Clinton gave it. He stood up against his two prime
constituencies, labor and environment, to drive it home over their dead
bodies.”

We sold our soul to
the devil. I say “we” because I was an enthusiastic Democrat then, and I
went along with it. I believed in “winning in inches.” I have come to
realize, after years of falling for Clinton the way some people fell for
Reagan, that the Dems are there to manage the left, not represent it.

The DLC is also
carefully managing
the new left on campus. The result, according to one student activist:
“The right actually ends up looking cooler than the left. I don’t know how
this is possible, but it’s true!” I don’t know, could it possibly be
because, “Some worry that the [student] organization, run in part by
former Clinton administration officials, is more interested in promoting a
centrist agenda than a strong, progressive alternative to the campus
right.”

To those who argue
that we have to concentrate on the elections in 2006, I would point out
that Democrats won the last two presidential elections, and quite possibly
the 2002 midterms as well—and they still lost! John Kerry capitulated
quickly and graciously, following Gore’s example, not because he wanted to
be thought of as a nice guy, but because it wouldn’t be good for business.
Not allowed.

In a recent article,
Bernard Weiner addressed the issue squarely: do we continue to
pressure the Dems and work within, or start a new party? For my own part,
I can no longer support the Democratic Party. I have no interest in a
Vichy government. I don’t want to collaborate, but they obviously do,
jumping up and applauding a dictator as he tells the nation during his
State of the Union exactly why he’s had to set aside our laws and
constitution.

We need a total
change of paradigm. Nothing else will do. It seems to me the one platform
that unites most Americans, and most citizens of the world, is a Green
platform. While we are being manipulated by images and bloodlust illusions
from the past, the future is evaporating. 2005 was
the warmest year since records started being kept about a hundred
years ago. Five of the warmest years on record occurred in the past
decade.

Recently, scientists
reported that warm ocean temperatures are killing the nutrients that feed
plankton. The entire ocean food chain begins with plankton. Highly
respected British climate scientist
James Lovelock believes that we are already past the point of no
return. He may be correct, but we have to do what we can, while we can.
That’s why I’m going Green.

I’ve thought about
this for a long time, but I’ve been held back, in part, by my lingering
hatred of Nader from 2000 through 2004. But I can admit now what I
couldn’t admit even a year ago: there is no difference between the two
parties. The true test of that proposition is not whether the world would
have been a different place had Al Gore taken his rightful office -- and
here I still vehemently disagree with Mr. Nader -- but whether Gore had
the power to take office after winning. He didn’t. Even with Bill Clinton
the sitting president, all the institutions of government closed ranks
against Gore, including the Democratic leadership.

It’s time we stop
pouring all our organizing resources and energy into a rigged electoral
game. We certainly have to stop believing that a party that won’t make
fair elections its number one priority is the hope of the future. It’s
insane!

We are going to have
to find a different way to send a message. We need to target Republicans
and corporations directly. They still need to manufacture some level of
public acceptance and consent, and we have to disrupt that. You don’t do
that by writing a letter begging Hillary Clinton to filibuster.

God knows the Greens
have their problems. They are divided, too, because the Dems, via
Progressive Democrats of America, are looking to acquire the Green Party
as a far-left (in their terms) political boutique. If people want to get
involved in
reforming a party from within, I suggest they put their efforts where
they might actually make a difference, within the Green Party, where the
burning question is at least being addressed, namely, do we try to partner
with corporations, through the corporate parties, or do we stay clear of
them entirely?

The Greens are
small, but that gives us the opportunity to make a strong impact. The
media hates the Greens with a passion, but the media does everything it
can to stifle all authentic opposition. Comes with the territory.

Here are some other
very good reasons to organize around the Greens.

First, environmental
activists are being openly targeted. It began with a ridiculous lawsuit
John Ashcroft brought against
Greenpeace. Ashcroft attempted to charge Greenpeace under an archaic
maritime statute, claiming that, “The heart of Greenpeace’s mission is the
violation of the law.” The FBI subsequently declared animal and
environmental extremists
the number one domestic terror threat -- in spite of the fact that
rightwing militias were responsible for the sole major act of domestic
U.S. terrorism, the Oklahoma City bombings.

We need to stand
between environmentalists and the Bush regime. Now. Safety in numbers.

Second, the Green
philosophy represents the political opinions of
the vast majority of people in the United States, and in the world.
It’s a place where people can agree, a way of framing the debate that
brings us together instead of driving us apart.

Third, it’s
international. Faux points out that even as the global ruling class is
becoming transnational, poverty is “framed as an issue of the distribution
of wealth between rich and poor countries, ignoring the existence of rich
people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.” They want to
buddy up with those rich people everywhere, from Bandhar Bush in Saudi
Arabia to the Venezuelans disgusted with Hugo Chavez’ socialism -- but
they don’t want us to do the same.

Fourth, a change of
voter registration is in itself a message, a version of burning a draft
card, a concrete step demonstrating a refusal to buy into assumptions that
not only enslave us but make us complicit in crimes against humanity. My
friends Daryl and Rob at MandateTHIS.org came up with the idea of mass
changes of registration, a Greenwave. We could go in groups to our local
boards of election to change our registration. Alert the media. I like it.

The next few years
are going to require an all-out struggle. We should take it for granted
that things are going to get much worse before they get better and resolve
to keep going no matter what. To do that, we have to have an authentic
message, based on gut principle and proper priorities. The Dems’ lame new
slogan -- We Can Do Better -- is hardly inspiring.

The Green
philosophy’s time has come. If we don’t put the environment first now, we
are not going to survive. It’s time to organize around our real problems
and seek real solutions. And here’s a motto: Don’t Be Evil.

Patricia Goldsmithis a member of
Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog
group. She can be reached at:plgoldsmith@optonline.net.